We are glad to be helping out Art Harry run a paddle workshop series. Check out The Portage Paddle Workshop on Facebook for details. Give the page a like and fill out an intake form and submit it to portagepaddleworkshop@gmail.com promptly before the course fills up.
Wood grows with character through a number of ways under stress.
Trees have a deep rooted history of truth which shares many tales of the past.
Rubenovitch Furnishings & Co. is focused on revealing stories within trees that can act as inspiration in our lives.
Trees are resilient organisms and we embody our works to focus on sharing and creating works from trees that have endured with beauty. The wood specimens we choose to work with may require more time and labour to birth a beautiful product but feel that in working with these pieces that have endured hardship they are an opportunity to share and reveal amazing beauty beneath the scars and rot on the surface. Below are a few examples of trees that yield diverse characteristics from stress within their environments.
Spalted Woods. Specifically Maple, a local wood to the sea to sky area. A common hardwood that spalts yielding artisan characteristics. There is an equanimity point, as trees endures they grow with character yielding black zone lines, white rot and pigmentation color changes.
Birdseye maple is another characteristic where branches from within the tree in darkness stretch towards the light striving to bud. The phenomenon yield’s eye looking shapes within the wood which occurs in a handful of wood species but is primarily found in Sugar Maple.
Wood Database says: “The Sugar Maple attempts to start numerous new buds to get more sunlight, but with poor growing conditions the new shoots are aborted, and afterward a number of tiny knots remain.”
Burls are deformities in tress that are a result of some form of stress that may be caused by injury, virus, or fungus.
A burl (American English) or bur or burr (UK English) is a tree growth in which the grain has grown in a deformed manner. It is commonly found in the form of a rounded outgrowth on a tree trunk or branch that is filled with small knots from dormant buds. The twists and turns in the grains yield beautiful artisan traits.
Heal Over/Wounds. Trees get scarred in life, if it be from a human pruning a branch or from a natural event. Trees fall and sometimes fall on one another. In this process it may crash and scar another tree as it slumps. The scars on trees can result in interesting lips or magical transmogrifications specifically in Douglas Fir. Trees also have the ability to support each other by grafting roots, underground in darkness. Neighbouring trees put in their energy and come to support scarred trees to reduce risks of fungus and infection spreading.
All these experiences evolve over time and if its up to a tree, a craft maker, or us humans it takes time to get to the core of the issue. What may seem rotten on the outside is likely that is special and has magical characteristics on the inside.
It was a pleasure to share at Bass Coast and exhibit an installation that shares a story about the beauty of darkness.
All pieces of the exhibit are available for sale and are looking for homes. Inquire for details
I want to give props to my right hand man Steve Slen who was such a delight to spend some time collaborating on the works.
There was a number of other rad art exhibitions on site.
It has been a bit of a challenge preparing for this show in the midst of the Tohubohu of my life and all the other projects I been working on. The root of the word is defined by chaos and utter confusion, but I don’t feel that way and can see past that and see its benefits.
Basscoast’s theme this year seems to be based around prism (& play from my perspective:). Much of our work sees to embody it in variety of ways. We burnt a fair share of our pieces, bringing new life into them and had fun acting like a pyro. Prism, like pyramids are shared in our work in shapes too. Using fire and heat to unite steel and us. Pyramids have also derived from PYRos.
I may struggle to make time to articulate the meaning behind the materials as I have continued to develop and understand their interconnectedness. But have a variety of projects Im tending to and look forward to getting around to writing up my feelings on the pieces when I chose to make the time. I hope you can enjoy them as is or may be able to see them more what lies behind their materials and process.
More imagery to see = (*follow).
Michelle from the Sea to Sky Start up and Vancouver Startup put together an amazing event last week.
The jam packed day featured approx. 25 speakers with 2 panels speaking on various social businesses and sectors in the entrepreneurship, self, healing and consciousness field. The mix of participants provided a refreshing and eye opening from many of the more metaphysical based workshops I have attended.
I reached out to Michelle a little before the event to see how I or Rubenovitch Furnishings & Co. could be involved and one thing led to another and in no time I had the honour of creating an award for Phil Swift, The keynote speaker. I managed to get some time on stage and had the opportunity to share the interrelation of the meanings behind the elements of the bookends and their connection to the summit and Phil. At first we were leaning towards writing some quote that held some meaning, but upon a little time, we quickly realized there was so much more meaning under the surface. Possibly more on the materials geology and xylology (study of wood) later.
The day ran from 9:30 to 5pm with speakers, then we had a quick break for dinner just before a meet and greet where we had the opportunity to continue to share some of our works. I had the opportunity to share some past works from my “Disappearing Dialogues” (updated gallery and preliminary research now online) project and also raise some awareness of an industrial art shared workspace concept in the works for the Whistler Area. If you are interested in hearing more and aiding bring the concept to life your input will be much appreicatted. Please reach out as we are keen on compiling a supportive case study. Following a brief meet and greet, toResonate shared some of their custom relaxing sound that eased the excitement of the day for those who were preparing to call it a night. For the others who were avid, an afterparty went way into the night.
Such a warming experience to share with others, thanks to all those involved and who attended.
I had the pleasure of meeting Daniel Wall from Wall Street Woodworks. He was kind enough to show me around his wood-shops and land. We quickly connected with our mutual passions for woodworking and spalting and approaches to life.
Password: wallstreet
Daniel is a retired long time Squamish local. He has been here long enough that he humbly got his road named after himself. He continues spending time in his woodshop but values his time and would prefer to spend it with his family in the summer while spending more time in his shop in the winter.
As Daniel toured me around his woodshops, I started to be mesmerized at how much beautiful woods and specifically spalted woods he has. Spalted woods are character woods, mostly hardwoods that grow with characters such as white rot, zone lines and pigmentation from stress that trees have in their life.
It was amazing to see such diverse species of woods that have produced spalt. Its typical to find Spalted maple in the area as its a more common wood of the area. But is not often I come across spalted birch, spalted cherry or spalted alder. Ill spare you the details but we got into some details about spalting and how Daniel has taken his own approach to aid induce the spalting process by leaving logs outdoors.
He continued touring me around his various workshops/and storage sheds that hold various woods he has collected over the years. Sharing the stories of their origins.
We continued walking around his property and walked throughout the forest on his property appreciating its history discussing trees, nature and their correlations to us.
We started discussing some collaborative projects specifically with some amazing Walnut slabs he has. We also discussed bartering and am looking forward to working and grabbing another slab from him.
If you are seeking a slab for a unique project or looking to get a custom project created, please feel free to reach out to us to explore how we could be of potential assistance.
It was a pleasure to share my pitch last week at the Squamish Lil Wat Cultural centre and participate in the Social Venture Challenge over the last 2 months.
The SVC is a mentorship based social community building program created by the Whistler centre of Sustainability that encourages growth to create new social ventures in the Sea to Sky Corridor.
The workshops and opportunity to push myself and dig further into evaluating and researching the operation and potential of where I would like to take Rubenovitch Furnishings & Co. has been rewarding to explore.
We were limited to pitch our business concept in under 3mins which was graded on value proposition, business model and pitch ( clear , concise, effective confidence, & wow factor).
Its nice to get out of my comfort zone and have the opportunity to share my passions with a larger group. Take a listen to my pitch to get a feel for a more in depth look at a sample of the operations and perspective we take with Rubenovitch Furnishings & Co.
Congrats to Keith on the win for his Gear Sharing hub concept.
We love wood. Textures, figure, colors, stress, burns, scars, spalt, burls, knots, species, destiny, durability, hardiness, decay and life. Wood holds so much character.
Woodswimmer is a stop motion film that takes a look into the milling and inner dimension of some character woods.
More details http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/06/woodswimmer-stop-motion-film/ -via www.Squamish.com
My Disappearing Dialogues research takes a look into the culture of Maiher region to see what “dialogues” are disappearing.
The Disappearing Dialogues program intention is to bring attention to the dialogues that are disappearing and connect them to our environment, culture/heritage and the indigenous community.
In this post, I share a sample of where part of the inspiration came from for the design of the coffee tables.
NATURE
It is a pleasure to be participating Whistler Centre for Sustainability Social venture Challenge program.
Over the last 5 weeks I have been participating in a handful of workshops, and have been working on getting a better understanding of the goals, vision, purpose and operations of Rubenovitch Furnishings & Co.
I will be participating in an Angels den style pitch event on June 28th at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, (6:00 – 8:30) for an opportunity to win $3000 in start up prize money. There will also be an audience prize, so come on out and cheer me on and hear a little more about what I have been working on.
Lenard Reid and Elizabeth Leboe, founders of Jackets for Jasper, a successful and heart-warming social enterprise will be speaking. There will be great food from the SLCC and tunes by DJ Foxy Moron.
Be sure to grab tickets asap as they sell out fast.
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/social-venture-challenge-pitch-event-2017-tickets-34585343694